TopShelfRob

Okay stupid question time .... when I follow that link you made for him, I can now edit the distance radius, but when I start a new search myself, the distance radius is always grayed out? I had quit using that search on mobile because of this, I thought it was a bug (feature) of mobile. 📱

Yep Turkey Run Stash and another one Fowler Park Wilderness Stash and I guess either one would get me November 2000. But my trip was canceled so maybe someday I'll give them a try... But speaking of impossible caches like IMM's caches I came across one 50 miles or so from me in Aiken SC that's never been found (hidden last summer)... so it's on my immediate To Do list now: http://coord.info/GC8RK7T Lol why am I drawn to these when I DNF on simple ones all the time?

Well my memory was jogged by a comment in a log of one of IMM's Shelter series caches .... the cache I was thinking of was "Gimme Shelter Too" by the late TVNewsBiz. As soon as I saw the cache name I remembered it, unfortunately I guess we don't remember things always exactly the way they are as it didn't seem to be all that I remembered it as far as being never found, and it has been long archived. It appears that his caches were inspired by IMM so we were on the right track though. But another of TVNewsBiz's caches caught my eye though, a puzzle cache named "Royale With Cheese". It is active but it appears the puzzle was never solved and the last note was in 2016. It was found once in 2011 but not by solving the puzzle but other clues.... and logged as a find only dubiously once in 2013. I guess the puzzle solution and any hints was taken to the grave by the CO. I hope to crack the code of this puzzle and find this one next month (although I doubt I will)... when I plan to be in Indiana on business and will look up some of IMM's caches and two that I need for Jasmer progress.

I feel like there was a particular one (that may be long archived now) that was featured in Geocaching Newsletter or somewhere official like that that had gone 7 years or so without anyone finding it. Does anyone remember which one this was?

Yep those look like the one I was thinking of... excited to find there is more than one. Thank you!

... from long ago. I've been out of Geocaching a long time and I'm trying to find a certain cache I remember reading about. I don't remember exactly where it was or the name of it or other details. What I do remember it was a famous cache it had an article written about it and at that point (which may have been around 2010) it had never been found. It was located in at a picnic table pavilion in a park or something like that. It was apparently a really unique hide and many people came to search for it and no one could find it and many suggested it wasn't there but CO would always check on it and confirm it indeed was still there. It may have been somewhere in the Kentucky/Tennessee/Ohio/West Virginia area but I'm not 100% sure. Does this ring a bell for anybody? I'd like to find the cache page and see if it's still unfound or if it's been found and active or is it long gone? But I'm having a heck of a time finding it when I can't remember the name or the location. Thanks

Let me go re-read it then, I thought this whole thread was about why commercialism is a bad thing for Geocaching. My apologies.

I just mean that it kinda cuts the legs out from the argument that commericalism is a nasty, horrible thing that has no place in Geocaching. (Unless a corporation "teams up with us" to be our "corporate partner" to offer a "fun and exciting adventure.") Also, there is a difference between Joe's Burger Barn sticking a cache in his own parking lot and trying to use it to sell burgers and a cache hider that has no affiliation with a business merely stating why he thought it would be a neat place for a cache.

Oh, so the problem isn't with crass commercialism -- it's with crass commericalism that doesn't give Groundspeak a cut of the action! I see! Now we're getting to the crux of the issue! How is commercialism any better just because it's a "Geocaching Branded Promotion"? Either it's good for the game or it isn't.

I thought I read somewhere that part of a good cache description is telling why you are bringing someone to this location? If one of the reasons you are bringing someone here is because of the good food that the nearby restaurant serves then by all means find a way to let people know that without coming out and specifically endorsing the business by name. It may be a fine line between commercialism/promotion and merely stating a fact about why you put the cache there. Figuring out a way to state something that makes a particular point while still following a rule may take some finesse. If due to this rule you can't even tell somebody why it's a good place for a cache, then either it's a bad rule or it's being enforced badly. There are more than enough caches in locations that have nothing special about them. If there is a cache near me that wants to bring me to a place that has the best beer in the county or the best hamburgers around, then I want to know about it!

To me a recommendation of a great place to eat near a cache location isn't an advertising endorsement, it's simply interesting flavor that adds to the enjoyment of caching. I guess everyone would be happier if instead of placing a hide near a favorite place to eat and drink, you just threw a film can under a lamppost and posted a boring cut-and-paste description. At least it wouldn't offend anybody.

I have a question -- what does this summer's promotion specifically have to do with a "road trip"? The quests (Find a geocache with 10 or more Favorite Points, Attend an Event, Mega-Event or Giga-Event, Find a T5 geocache, Find an EarthCache or attend a CITO, Find a Mystery Cache) hardly seem to have any special connection to requiring a road trip to find them, or at least no more of a road trip than normal geocaching would require at any time, depending on how many unfound caches there are in proximity to where you live. Maybe the event one, but only if you happen to live somewhere other than where the event is taking place. I am planning a road trip later this month and I would think things like "Find a geocache in 20 different counties"... "Find a T5 geocache in three different states" ... "Find x amount of interstate road-side / rest stop caches" would be more specifically tailored to a "Road Trip" theme than these quests which just seem like "geocaching". This just seems to be a contrived thing come up with simply for the sake of coming up with something for people to do to earn a souvenir. What is special about merely finding a Mystery Cache during a specific week that is worthy of a souvenir?

Well there's many reasons why people can be too busy to be a responsible cache owner... You don't need to drop everything -- that's what so beautiful about the system, if you're too busy to fulfill your duties, just wait 30 days after getting a NM, and it'll get archived, you won't have to lift a finger. If there's all that going on in your life, then maintaining your caches should certainly take a back seat to such important matters... it's okay, we understand. When things lighten up a little, you can always hide more caches. If I'm dead you should archive it -- I won't be able to maintain it anymore! If I happen to be a cache owner when I die, I hope my caches get archived on the 31st day after they put me in the groud. If you hear that TopShelfRob has died, please post a NM on my caches the next day -- I apologize in advance, but even if nothing's wrong with them right now, they will need maintaining in the future and I'll be unable to do it. I'd hate to think there'd a bunch of ninnys arguing in the forums about whether or not they should archive my post-mortem caches. Please, archive them... if I'm six feet deep, I assure you I won't be replying to any NMs from the beyond. If I'm not dead and get too busy to reply, then I'll adopt them out or archive 'em myself. If I quit the game or I'm dead, and you don't hear from me, then archive them. If I am too busy to reply in 30 days then don't hesitate to archive them: If I'm dead then I can't maintain them, and if I'm not dead but too busy, I'm obviously not maintaining them either... When I get time I can always hide more. Hint: If I'm still posting in the forum, I'm not dead. If it's elitist to not encourage geolitter, then I guess I'm an elitist.

If it's too elitist to expect that 30 days is a reasonable amount of time that responsible cache owners should be able to respond to NM logs on their caches, then how long should casual COs get before non-response would be considered irresponsible? 60 days? 90 days? 6 months? A year? I think 30 days is about right, and whoever decided those guidelines have their reasons. If they can't respond to a simple log on the website in a month, how long does it take them to repair a full log or replace a misplaced cache? I mean if you own 400 caches across the state, I can't imagine you would check on them all every month without getting alerted that there was a problem. The least they can do is let people know they're not ignoring the alert, even if it's just to say you'll take care of it after spring thaw. I've been caching off and on (casually) since 2007 and I know I am no where near involved enough with the hobby to be a cache owner. If I ever do get the combination of the right location, the right container, and enough time to devote to the hobby to feel that it wouldn't be irresponsible of me to be a cache owner, then maybe I'll hide one. In the mean time, I'll just go seeking out other caches. Even so if I did own a cache right now, I bet I could still manage to be bothered enough to at least reply to any logs that needed attention within a week or so. If I owned more than one cache and it'd take me more than 30 days to respond to any issues, I'd say I'd be owning more caches than I could responsibly maintain. Ah, who cares? I guess I can just slap a film can under a LPC and forget about other than once or twice a year.

It's "invite-people-in-for-tea" type of cache I'm talking about, but it's also a "I don't-want-a-whole-bunch-of-non-qualifiers-that-I'm-not-intending-on-inviting-in-come-snooping-around-the-porch-because-they-still-want-to-sign-it-as-a-note" type of situation.

People limit themselves. Few people will go to an out-of-the-way location. Thus, if you hide a cache there, it will receive few visitors. Problem solved. Totally missing the point.... Yes, go put a cache in a lonely and inconvienent place, you won't get many visitors. But that has nothing to do with the hypothetical cache I'm talking about.

I never said anything about "email me for coords" -- I'm trying to state a case for "seek only when you qualify"... and as for "There's no restricting visits on Challenge caches" - well, of course not if you can't prevent non-qualifiers from seeking them -- that's my point! There's no limit to how many people can eventually solve (or cheat on) a "multi, puzzle, or a series bonus cache." And as for putting it in some lonely and inconvenient place, there you wouldn't have to limit it.

I did not mean to infer that I was referring to the original poster's situation, just a hypothetical situation that a challenge cache owner could have to deal with considering that such a challenge cache could be unintendedly sought out by non-qualifiers. Wasn't trying to get off topic, however, just mentioning this as to how it relates to non-qualifiers logging challenge caches as notes, as in the original post.

No, I do assume they intend on their challenge caches only being found by qualifiers. But if they can't enforce that by not being able to restrict non-qualifiers from finding them, then what does it matter what their intentions are? The net result is anyone can find them, whether they have qualified or not. I'm not saying your comments are suggesting that, I'm saying that they might as well just hide another lame LPC rather than bother with an intricate challenege cache that will sooner or later eventually just get muggled by a non-qualifer anyway.

This has nothing to do with demanding that non-qualifiers not sign it, just hiding it with the intention that it will only be found by qualifiers. If you are intending it to be found by everybody, qualifiers and non-qualifiers, then a CO might as well just make it a traditional, there's no point in making it a challenge cache. Just limiting it to PMO or limiting it to people who are able to solve (or cheat) at a puzzle might not restrict it enough for a particular location. I'm thinking of an example where a CO might have a very special cache perhaps a very intricate or hand crafted container, something he doesn't want every Tom Dick and Harry to come look for. Maybe it's on his own property, maybe it's somewhere he doesn't want every idiot with a smartphone app to come snooping around. Maybe it's a very well-thought out hide, a very intricately designed cache that is truly an accomplishment, designed only for those that have accomplished a very specific set of Geocaching related acheievements that would insure it would get a very limited amount of visits per year. In fact, so few, that when someone were to find it the CO might want to invite them in for tea or something, because they certainly have accomplished something special. He certainly wouldn't want to deal, at such a location like that, with multiple visits per day of non-qualifiers signing the physical log and logging it as a note just so that someday when they do qualify, they'll have a record of it. Yes, you could find a different location, but that's a whole different cache. Put it at a different location, make it a traditional, go put it under a lamppost, yes that's what we need, more of those. I'm talking about something special, and if guidelines prevent that, then that's a shame, because there's nothing special about another LPC at Wal-Mart.

Well I don't necessarily disagree with most of your disagreements to my comments, however, I don't really see why if it's okay to use premium members only or adding a puzzle to limit visitors to a cache, yet it's not okay to expect that limiting it to challenge qualifiers would also limit the amount of visitors? Or at least I don't see how or why that's a "better" way to do it, and in whose opinion and by what criteria which is "better". Besides adding a puzzle won't necessarily prevent people from finding it, they'll just cheat on the puzzle.

Isn't the reason for the existence of challenge caches so that cache owners can have a cache that can only be found by those who have completed the "Geocaching related task or accomplishment"? If people that haven't qualified are logging them as notes, it seems to do a disservice to both sides. The people who have "found it" but haven't "really found it" don't get a smiley, which is fine if they're not in it for the smileys, but at best their "found it count/containers found/smileys on the website" amounts are going to be inaccurate. The CO's who have made their cache a challenge cache in an effort to minimize it's impact on the location are still getting visits from the non-qualifiers that they hoped to prevent from finding them. If everyone can find them and the smiley count doesn't matter, why not just make them traditionals? If the smiley count doesn't matter, then everyone who finds it can get one. Otherwise people should be told what I was told in another thread about not being able to log a cache that I can find because I hadn't yet qualified for it: "What are you doing looking for a cache you don't qualify to 'find' ?" Being allowed to "find" them ahead of time with a note just seems to really mess with both sides... Either take a stand and make it that non-qualifiers aren't allowed to seek them or outlaw them altogether. This straddling both sides of the fence is serving neither purpose.

Is the Pennypack Trail named after this guy?

And some people will see: "DO NOT SEARCH FOR AT NIGHT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES" and interpret that to mean: "GOOD, I CAN SEARCH FOR IT AT NIGHT AND HAVE IT TO MYSELF BECAUSE NO ONE ELSE WILL BE THERE SEARCHING FOR IT THEN"

I think the people who approve of it simply call it "geocaching". Therein lies the problem.